Inventor feels flush after loo cleaner raises £20,000

Scottish inventor, Garry Stewart, is celebrating an astonishing response on crowdfunding site Kickstarter for his “LooBlade” which promises to replace the traditional toilet brush.

A 30-day campaign to raise £20,000 reached its target in just 10 days, and is still going strong. With funding for manufacturing in Shanghai now secured, the first LooBlades will be delivered to Kickstarter backers in December, with full retail availability in January.

The international profile generated by LooBlade’s Kickstarter campaign has already resulted in contacts from retailers and distributors across the world. As a result, Dunfermline-born Stewart has already signed a distribution deal in Germany for supply into one of the country’s largest retailers of designer products.

“My long-term goal for LooBlade was obviously to see the product taken on by mainstream retailers, and I’ve already been amazed at the number of enquiries that have come in since the campaign begun,” said Mr Stewart, whose company is based in Kinross.

“In addition to securing the deal in Germany, I’m also engaged in discussions with companies from countries including the USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil, China, Japan and Taiwan.”

The design of LooBlade is centred on the invention of a patent-pending technology called SwipeClean, which replaces the classic brush bristles with an 8-blade silicone cleaning head that maintains a continuous contact with the surface to “swipe” it clean.

After hitting its target on Kickstarter, a new “stretch goal” of £30,000 has been set. This will see the introduction of a new version of the product with a bamboo handle, in addition to the three colours already available.

“The traditional toilet brush is a fundamentally flawed design – they don’t clean efficiently, they clog-up easily, they drip everywhere, they result in excessive use of cleaning chemicals and water, and ultimately people hate the sight of them,” said Mr Stewart.